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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2578 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Came across this story on Wikipedia while reading a bit about Japan's surrender in WW2 and found it really funny

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_McDilda

Long story short - an american P-51 pilot was shot down over Osaka and captured 2 days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The Japanese started torturing him and threatening to kill him asking questions about "how many atomic bombs does the USA have" - to this pilot at this time, an Atomic Bomb would have been something out of an HG Wells novel, a theoretical science fiction possibility. Imagine a Japanese officer threatening to cut off your head unless you explained how many Warp Drives the USA had..."we have warp drives?" - but not only that, they then demanded that he explain how the atomic bomb works - to which his explanation is actually not half bad in my opinion. He also claims that the USA has 100s of atomic bombs because the guy isn't accepting 0 as an answer, and my understanding is that this intel helped partially lead to Japan's surrender.

He's so convincing that he gets flown in as a VIP to Tokyo where a civilian scientist realizes he's full of crap, but appears to not fully narc him out? I'm just imagining this story, finding out via your captors that some space age tech is real and then being forced to answer questions about it! Kind of funny to imagine

I suppose from a certain historical distance it’s ironically funny…. But it’s distasteful to laugh at someone being brutally tortured in my experience. Most of us here are blessed to live in the developed western world where that’s not a realistic concern.

Killjoy

I’ll accept it. This is the Motte after all ;)

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